Many households have large collections of many kinds of entertainment media (for example, CDs, videotapes, videodiscs, books), and other items too numerous to keep track of easily via the methods currently in use.
At present, a person with a large collection of, for instance, music recordings, when trying to determine whether or not a new purchase would duplicate a previous one, is obliged to depend on memory alone or on unwieldy paper information, such as bundles of index cards. It is currently possible to enter data into a personal computer, and to print it out as a list. But for large collections, the printed inventories would be cumbersome, as well as quickly becoming obsolete, necessitating a lot of nuisance and waste.
If an individual must remember, after coming home to a stationary computer, to painstakingly enter information about each item purchased, as is the case at present, it is much less likely that these records will actually be kept up to date.
This invention combines hardware items that are currently ubiquitous to achieve novel results that would serve needs which nothing extant currently addresses.
Computers are not new, nor are inventory-tracking systems of various kinds, including inventory-tracking software. Hand-held scanners are in use for inventory tracking and control in warehouses and large retail stores. Some retail stores allow consumers to temporarily make use of a barcode scanner, in conjunction with a computer with a database of product information, most frequently in order to facilitate price checking. The concept of an individually owned, portable personal inventory management system is very different in its ramifications from previous utilization of these components.
A Boolean search of over 1500 patents revealed nothing comparable to this invention. Patents which deal with barcode readers in conjunction with inventories are all aimed at businesses. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,939,695 (for a “Product identification system using band-held customer assistant unit with a code reader”) is designed to benefit retailers. None of the patents referred to equipment owned by an individual consumer, rather than a store or other corporate entity.
In recent months there has been a lot of discussion on the internet about ways to take advantage of a device called the CueCat, containing a barcode scanner, which is being given away by a company called Digital Convergence (401 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10016). Several web sites have instructions and suggestions for modifying these devices from their original purpose. A few people mention turning the barcode scanner in the device to the purpose of reading barcode data of various kinds. However, the CueCat is very limited in processing capability, so it can not store much information. These are used while physically connected to a computer, taking advantage of the computer's processing power and memory storage.
Cross (A. T. Cross Company, Lincoln, R.I.) offers a variant of the CueCat device in a portable form. It resides inside a Cross pen, and can scan and retain a limited number of barcodes. It has no display. Someone with this device can load the saved information into a computer via a docking device. That is the extent of its capabilities, so it is of limited usefulness.
Another company to suggest alternative uses for CueCats is Readerware (P.O. Box 12325, San Francisco, Calif. 94112-0325). This company makes software which can be used in conjunction with various barcode readers and computers to compile databases of information and to catalogue an inventory of books. This software helps users search for barcode-encoded data on the internet.
A new version of Readerware's software is available for porting data to a Palm Pilot (Palm, Inc. 5470 Great America Pkwy Santa Clara, Calif. USA 95052), which is a portable data storage device with a digital display. By loading data to the Palm Pilot, a user is enabled to take a database, such as a want-list of desired books, on shopping expedition. However, the Palm Pilot is not equipped for intake of information other than by coupling with a computer or via hand data entry, and lacks the software to decrypt barcode data on its own. Nor can it do the data-base comparisons to tell a shopper whether or not an item already is in “owned” inventory.
These recent technological developments appear to be leading toward the eventual development of a cohesive system such as the present invention, but none of them takes into account all of the needs that this invention addresses in one integrated package. All of them have significant gaps. Therefore, it would seem that the present invention is not an obvious use of the technologies it brings together.